For local 'Treme' viewers, Clarke Peters brings Big Chief Albert Lambreaux to life

From his first crushing return home to the repeated recovery setbacks he’s faced in season two, Albert Lambreaux has personified post-Katrina life for many “Treme” viewers.

HBOClarke Peters in 'Treme.'

There have been moments of triumph and transcendence mixed in with the misery, for sure.

The successful first St. Joseph’s Day walk by the Big Chief and his Mardi Gras Indians gang was thrilling.

Sunday’s quiet moment between Albert and Delmond, as the son presented his daddy with tribute beadwork, was one of this season’s emotional high points.

Good thing. Albert needed a lift. The road home has been anything but smooth for Clarke Peters’ Big Chief.

So it’s no surprise that locals love the actor who brings the character to life.

Interviewed midway through production of the now-wrapped current season, Peters said he had long heard other performers say that an audience or city had showed them or their project “a lot of love,” but was always puzzled by the expression.

“I’m thinking, what the hell does that mean?” he said. “Well, now I know.”

The phenomenon came to life as the interview concluded, as another patron of the Frenchmen Street coffee shop Café Rose Nicaud politely introduced himself to Peters, handed over a business card, and said, “Thank you. If you ever need anything …”

“That people have gone through so much, it means much more,” Peters said. “It’s more than, ‘Well done.’ We were able to be the megaphone for them, in some respects, to get this out. For some, it’s cathartic.

“This is the good thing about art. This is how art should function in our society. It shouldn’t be a commodity we just take down at Christmastime or in the summer just to occupy people when they’re not at work.

“(There is) healing in talking about it and getting over it. It’s also a testament that they were not crushed by it -- to their strength, to their perseverance, to whatever it takes, whatever virtues a person needs to galvanize themselves, to get through when literally there is death and destruction around you.

“This is not a movie. You don’t get a second take at this. You don’t get to reset that body over there and go through it again.”

Peters, whose previous collaborations with “Treme” co-creator David Simon included “The Corner” and “The Wire,” both for HBO -- said he doesn’t remember too many specifics about the early conversations he had with Simon about his prospective New Orleans project, if only because there were so few.

“Two things I remember,” Peters said. “In one conversation, he said, ‘I’d love to write a musical.’ I told him last week, ‘Do you remember when you said that?’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘I think this is it.’ He said, ‘I don’t think so.’ I said, ‘I think so.’

“Then, he gave me a warning. He said, ‘What instrument would you like to play, bass or drums?’ I got a snare drum, a marching drum. It was just too damn loud. I said, ‘Listen, I’ve never played bass.’ He said, ‘Well, get the bass.’

“I knew he had something in mind. He didn’t say, ‘Research Mardi Gras Indians’ or anything like that. Then he turned me on to local music. That’s when it started to come together.

“David sort of goes, ‘I got an idea.’”

The idea has propelled Peters and Lambreaux through a gauntlet of motions and emotions during the series’ 16 episodes so far.

A violent encounter with the NOPD after staking a claim to a shuttered public-housing unit, then subsequent jail time on Fat Tuesday, a sacred day for his character.

His scattered gang. His scattered family. Lost tools. Found tools. A startling beat-down of the suspected tool thief.

For viewers who’d come to know Lambreaux as a proud craftsman, father, leader and unbowed New Orleanian, that beating revealed the latent warrior beneath the Big Chief’s plumage. Though a brutal assault, it was also a statement about the multiple cultures that flow through Lambreaux.

“I daresay that culture he’s attached to … that’s what he’s defending,” Peters said. “He’s defending it as much as he can, almost at all costs.

“By that time, I think I’d been around the Indians enough, and spoken with David, to be able to see what this culture means to this man. I wasn’t surprised, actually, that he went after the boy and tried to give him a lesson. What I was surprised about was where this rage came from.

“It shook me. At the end of it, Clarke had to take himself away from that house. That’s where some of these people were at one point in time. What is a crime, and what is that crime in a time of war? Yes, it was (a crime), but I understand it. I don’t condone it, but I understand it.”

For Peters, defending New Orleans and its culture and his character has extended to viewers he’s met elsewhere who saw but couldn’t quite process as real the scene in the series’ premiere in which Lambreaux, chanting and dressed in his Indian suit, stepped out of the shadows to recruit Davi Jay’s Robinette for a first post-K Indians practice.

“You get, ‘That was just some made up (stuff), Clarke, wasn’t it?’” he said. “I’m, ‘No.’ ‘You looked like Big Bird when you came out.’ I really want to smack that person. I got insulted for Lambreaux. ‘Don’t be talking about me. I was pretty.’”

New Orleans native Wendell Pierce, who plays trombonist Antoine Batiste, hasn’t had a chance to actually act in a scene with Peters so far on “Treme.” Instead, he’s experienced Peters’ work in the series strictly as a viewer, colleague and old friend.

“You couldn’t get a better actor to play the chief -- the depth of his work, and his sensibility, and his understanding of the research that he’s done to delve into the culture,” said Pierce, recalling a vignette from years before anyone knew there would be a “Treme.”

Pierce invited his “The Wire” costars Peters and Dominic West to Mardi Gras one year, and the trio stayed in a Treme apartment.

“One morning I get up, and Clarke was coming back in,” Pierce said. “I said, ‘Hung out all night long?’ He said, ‘Man, I couldn’t be this close and not go to Congo Square. I had to go and meditate at Congo Square.’

“This was morning. It was pretty early. And he went to meditate in Congo Square. I always think about that when I see him as the Big Chief. I now know what that trip was about. I know it wasn’t arbitrary.”

A Tony Award nominee for his Louis Jordan musical “Five Guys Named Moe” – he starred in a revival during the hiatus between “Treme” seasons at Scotland’s Edinburgh Festival of arts and culture – Peters is a Broadway and West End veteran who has experienced a different kind of theater in New Orleans.

“This is theater,” he said, gesturing at Frenchmen Street. “New Orleans is living theater. Just around the corner, in the next 20 minutes, something that only happens in New Orleans – associated with food or music or dance or comedy -- is going to happen.

“People outside of New Orleans just don’t get that, but hopefully (“Treme”) is the best commercial that New Orleans is ever going to get.”

Some of the highest drama Peters has witnessed has come during the times he’s been invited to observe and even participate in Indians or social aid and pleasure club activities.

“That’s when I know that another part of me has opened up,” he said. “It’s like an awakening. You go to a second line or (an Indians) practice, you take out a tambourine and suddenly you realize, ‘I didn’t know I could so this.’ Something has taken over.”

New York City-born, Peters resides in London and a Marigny apartment while “Treme” is in production. A series of paintings inspired by the time he’s spent here is on display in Café Rose Nicaud through July 12.

“A community that will celebrate life, death, food – a Dionysian kind of thing – these are special people,” he said. “When you come to work, you can’t help but bring these things with you.

“This isn’t like any gig, because it resonates inside of us all, emotionally, constantly.”

Dave Walker can be reached at dwalker@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3429. Read more TV coverage at NOLAa.com/tv. Follow him at twitter.com/davewalkertp.